News Home

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a blunt-talking conservative often at odds with the Obama administration, is vying to be the next chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, she told POLITICO.

Foxx, who served on the Republican Party’s platform steering committee, is widely assumed to be in line to take over the chairmanship if Republicans maintain control of the House.

In a wide-ranging interview announcing her candidacy, Foxx said Monday from her Capitol Hill office that a Donald Trump administration would be “akin to heaven on Earth” compared with the Obama administration's education and labor policies.

Foxx said she would use her leadership position to push for a repeal of a wide range of Obama administration regulations. She vowed “to do whatever we can to stop the rules coming out of the Labor Department — either block them or repeal them.”

On education, Foxx said she would seek to drastically reduce the federal government’s role, echoing Trump, who has suggested he would try to eliminate the Education Department.
Foxx said she, too, doesn’t think the Education Department should exist, but added that she was a “realist” — meaning it’s unlikely the department will shut it doors.

She pledged to do “as much as humanly possible to roll back the functions of the federal government in education.”

Foxx has long been outspoken in criticizing the Obama administration’s crackdown on for-profit colleges, saying the focus on one sector of higher education is unfair. In the interview, she was particularly critical of the Education Department’s actions that led to last week’s collapse of ITT Tech, calling it “totally arbitrary.”

“There was not one iota of proof the school did anything wrong,” Foxx said. The lawmaker said the administration failed to consider what would happen to ITT students, who were left “out on the street” in the wake of the closure.

Education Secretary John B. King Jr. has said action against ITT Tech was needed to protect students and taxpayers after the school fell out of compliance with its accreditor. The company had also been sued by state and federal regulators.

A Hillary Clinton presidency, Foxx said, would be “an extension” of the current administration. Foxx said she opposes Clinton’s pitch to provide free public tuition to families making up to $125,000, saying there’s “no such thing as free tuition — somebody’s paying for that.”

“It’s not up to the federal government to provide a free education,” Foxx said.

Foxx said a top education priority would be to update the Higher Education Act, and she would seek much greater transparency from colleges on metrics such as the graduation rate of Pell grant recipients.

Foxx, a former community college president and school board member who grew up poor in rural North Carolina, said she has “lived through a lot of the issues related to this committee.”

On the labor front, Foxx said she would prioritize repealing the Labor Department’s major regulations under the Obama administration, including the overtime, fiduciary and persuader rules. She also said she would repeal the National Labor Relations Board’s broadened joint employer standard and the agency’s rule to speed up the union election process.

“The administration thinks it’s doing good things for workers and employers and I think they’re having just the opposite effect on everybody,” she said.

But Foxx conceded that her effort to repeal the Labor Department regulations will depend on who wins the White House.

Foxx said she would support pension reform and endorsed recent draft legislation from Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) to create so-called “composite plans,” which are intended to shore up financially troubled multi-employer pension plans by combining features of defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Foxx said Kline’s funding requirements for the composite plans were “sensible” and “should be ... done by every plan.”

Foxx also told POLITICO that the National Labor Relations Board “should absolutely have a quorum.” The NLRB will lose its quorum next year. Foxx added that she wanted to hold hearings to re-examine the National Labor Relations Act.

If Republicans maintain control of the House, and Foxx takes control of the committee, she would likely be one of a very small number of female full committee chairs. The only woman this term in a full committee chairmanship role is Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), chair of the House Administration Committee. Miller is retiring.

Kline, the current education and workforce chairman, is retiring at the end of the term.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/virginia-foxx-makes-play-for-house-education-and-labor-committee-chairmanship-228073